What if Santa was an immortal former Viking marauder, still spoiling for a fight?
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A dark yuletide comedy with a twist – and a gouge, and more than a few crushed skulls – Violent Night is clearly hoping you’ll be having too much fun to say “ho-ho-hold on a minute” to some of its faults. These include occasional poor lighting, choppy editing in some of the fight scenes, and plot holes through which you could drive a sleigh and eight tiny reindeer. But for the most part, the film succeeds merrily.
Alex Hassell and Alexis Louder star as Jason and Linda, an estranged couple who agree to attend his mother’s Christmas party for the sake of their young daughter, Trudy (Leah Brady). The family gathering, presided over by matriarch Gertrude (Beverly D’Angelo), feels like a slimmed-down, B-list version of the original Knives Out. Edi Patterson plays sycophantic daughter Alva, with a dim-bulb husband and an impossibly entitled kid. Far more naughty than nice, though Jason, Linda and Trudy seem decent enough.
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Things go south when thieves, led by a grouchy John Leguizamo, take the family hostage and start trying to crack the massive safe in the mansion’s basement. But they didn’t count on the simultaneous arrival of Santa Claus (David Harbour), drunk and disorderly and disillusioned and spoiling for a fight.
The script, by Pat Casey and Josh Miller (Sonic the Hedgehog), provides just enough Santa backstory to convince us he’s the real deal. Imagine if you will a Viking at the end of the first millennium discovering that he was immortal, and over the subsequent centuries evolving from a blunt instrument of solstitial vengeance into the jolly gift-giver we know today. Centuries have smoothed off the rough edges and made him more carrot and less stick, but he still has fond recollections of iron-age weaponry. And muscle memory never really disappears, does it?
So when Trudy calls on Santa for assistance, he swings into action. The result is part Home Alone (which the movie fearlessly name-checks from the get-go) and part A Christmas Carol, if you imagine a version where the ghost of Marley took those chains he forged in life and tried to garrote someone with them.
Director Tommy Wirkola has made these kind of overlapping horror-comedy stories before, including 2009’s Dead Snow (skiers vs. Nazi zombies) and the terrible 2013 flick Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, with Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton. It put the grim in Grimm. Violent Night nails the mix nicely – I could have done with the gore turned down a notch or two, but there are moviergoers who long for creative puncture wounds and bodies cut in half, and they will not be disappointed.
And give credit to the film for not trying to over-explain itself. When someone wants to know how Santa’s sack manages to contain an infinite number of presents, he says merely: “Christmas magic,” before adding: “I don’t really understand how it works.” In other words, enjoy the eggnog, and don’t trouble yourself too much with how it was made.
Violent Night opens Dec. 2 in theatres.
3.5 stars out of 5
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